Crying Rape -- Is there really a rape epidemic? Probably not.

From National Review:

Violent-crime statistics — including sex crimes — have been declining for two decades. Did all the bad guys suddenly decide to enroll in universities? No one can explain it, other than to claim that rapes must have been underreported in the past (a claim that is, conveniently, impossible to disprove).

Are there truly more rapes occurring, or:

(1) Are college administrators, now largely in charge of presiding over rape allegations, quick to pronounce a situation as a rape, erring on the side of caution and of extreme feminism? As Caroline Kitchens reports:

Through a series of heavy-handed executive actions, the Obama administration has effectively required universities to serve as investigators and jurors for felony offenses. By doing so, they have placed universities in an impossible position, created costly bureaucracy, trampled students’ due-process rights, and empowered a cadre of hypersensitive, trigger-happy gender warriors on campuses.

(2) Are women themselves being taught to believe they were raped (the aforementioned “only sober consent is true consent!” notion)? Yes. And that, ironically enough, makes these women victims of liberal culture, too.

There is, naturally, a pressing consequence of all this that few discuss — the impact on the lives of the accused. The Left loves to paint a caricature — seen in countless films and shows (for example, the frat boys in American Horror Story: Coven) of a smirking college male who deliberately drugs and rapes a girl. That, undoubtedly, is rape and such a “man” deserves the worst the law and life can throw at him. But life is not so black and white, nor clear-cut, and those situations are far outweighed by murkier ones.

The Regime of the Dear Leader is bowing it's head to the all mighty alter of misrandric, radical feminist that fill many campuses across the country. Read the scary example below.

Allow me to share a tale of my senior year in college. My friend “Amy” stumbled into my apartment on Saturday afternoon after a wild night. I’d left the club around 3 a.m. and had last seen Amy walking out with “Steve,” a guy she’d fancied for quite some time. She spilled all the details about their wild night, as my roommate and I listened and laughed at the “TMI” portions. But then evening rolled around and Amy hadn’t heard from “Steve.” Calls she placed went unreturned. She began to fret. Suddenly, adjectives she’d used earlier to describe Steve (“amazing,” “so cool”) were turning into “jerk” and “Why the hell hasn’t he called back?” By midnight, when she finally got ahold of him, only to learn he was blowing her off, and was later seen with another girl at the same club, she became a downright wreck.

The following morning, Amy called me: “You know, I’ve been thinking. I had a lot to drink the other night, right? I mean, you saw how drunk I was.” I told Amy she actually wasn’t very drunk, as we’d not been at the club long before she left with Steve. Amy insisted: “No, trust me — I was really drunk. Like, I don’t even remember going home with him. I know it’s going to sound crazy but — I think he raped me.”

My phone nearly dropped. I told Amy to come over immediately. We talked it through. I was determined to support her if she had been violated in any way, even suggesting we go to the hospital to have her examined, but the more I spoke to her, the more it became clear this was a case not of rape but of “regrettable sex.” Amy felt scorned, used, and hurt — convincing herself she had been raped was a way of saving her dignity and avoiding the hurtful reality.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and Amy ultimately decided against filing a report. (In case you’re wondering, a week later she was still hunting down Steve — the “rape” a far cry from her mind.) But how many Amys go through with it? And how many Steves have their reputations ruined, perhaps even their lives, with a false accusation? While it’s easy to imagine Steve as a smirking, smug jerk, he was actually a hard-working guy from a poor family, at the university on a scholarship. Amy’s accusation would have easily ruined his life.

For good reason, it is hard to forget Amy — a reminder that, to the extent some in our society remain skeptical of rape claims, women themselves bear a share of the blame. After all, for every legitimate, actual rape claim there may be another that was not: a girl who cried rape.

Yes, it is all about how the FEELS about the encounter, afterward. So that was the woman does not have to take responsibility for her actions.

Liberals scoff and dismiss the idea that women sometimes falsely claim rape or wrongly believe they were raped. One activist in Canada recently stated: “People just don’t lie about” rape.

Really? See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, just to name a few. Navy veteran Tyrone Hicks, the “Bronx rapist” who spent ten years in prison, was finally exonerated Thursday after proving that a rape victim had misidentified him.

Remember the Duke Lacrosse Non-Rape Case?

When the pendulum swings the other way, all these cases of false accusations will make life even more difficult for TRUE rape victims.